Roy Hodgson has admitted that he needs to offload some players from his squad too.

That would seem strange to think on the surface, given the size of the squad at Crystal Palace , but the boss has admitted there are some players who have no part to play in his plans.

He said: "I do believe we have some quality players at the club. I also still believe my original assessment that we need to balance our squad a little bit better, we need more competition in certain places and we need strengthening in certain places and we need to, if we can, reduce the number of players in the squad because a lot of them in my opinion aren't going to be helping me over the next few months to help me win the games I need to win.

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He added: "I always believe you are where you are, three games into my time at my club we were even further down at the bottom of the table.

"I've never thought in those kind of terms, they're the type of things other people can say. They'll watch Wilf Zaha have a wonder game and say 'they're not a bottom three team'. You're a bottom three team when you're in the bottom three, that's how simple it is and we've got a lot of work to do.